The Revolution Will Be Merchandised

In one of the more bizarre twists of the election season, Walmart has posted election videos from John McCain and Barack Obama on their corporate and e-commerce websites:

http://walmartstores.com/communitygiving/election/

According to Walmart's press release, their intent is to:

Enable the candidates to introduce themselves to customers, club members and associates, detail their plans and positions on key issues, and will reflect the candidates' campaign platforms in a nonpartisan manner.

What is probably more motivating for the candidates is this Walmart declaration:

An August survey conducted by Voter/Consumer Research of Washington, D.C. showed that nearly half of undecided registered voters say they are more likely to shop at Wal-Mart today than they were six months ago.

Walmart.com currently ranks as the 250th most visited website in the US. Which practically makes it a mass media outlet on its own. Throw in their Sam's Club, corporate, and intranet sites, and the videos could reach a potential 15 million visitors over the next 2 weeks.

It is positioned as part of Walmart's voter registration initiative. I can't help feeling a little skeptical, considering they showcase their "Price Leadership Commercials" on the same page. I do give them credit for at least providing links to the other lesser-known third party candidates (Constitution party anyone?)

From a lobbying standpoint, Walmart will be able to publicize their site reports post-election and remind future candidates of their clout. The number of site visits, video views, and consumer comments about this initiative will no doubt demonstrate Walmart's influence and reach with the average American voter.

And don't forget about their in-store television network, which pumps branded content into 3,000 stores daily. That could be the next media outlet in 2012. It just went IPTV which allows advertisers to "better target shoppers by store, screen, day and time-of-day and change their messages more frequently." This gives Walmart the opportunity to promote, er I mean support, local elections as well.

Walmart is playing the neutral, non-partisan content distributor now. Let's hope they continue to follow that path in the future. Otherwise the Store Greeter might ask if you prefer cart or basket, paper or plastic, and Republican or Democrat.

Brother, Can You Spare Some KinzCash?

I've been thinking a lot about micropayments lately. Back in Dotcom 1.0, it was lauded as a sure thing to drive the success of the Internet. It was essentially the Long Tail of e-commerce = paying minimal fees for accessing content or services online. Which, over time, would add up to real big revenue for the companies providing it.

Dotcom companies tried all types of micropayment schemes = digital tokens, points, microwallets, etc. In the end we got Paypal, 99 cent iTunes, and affiliate marketing kickbacks via Amazon.com "buy this book" referral buttons.

But I have noticed the reemergence of micropayments in a most unusual place: kid-focused virtual worlds such as Webkinz, Club Penguin, and Neopets. The focus of these sites is accumulating virtual stuff for your virtual pet/avatar. This includes virtual houses, furniture, clothes, food. In order to purchase it, you need to accumulate virtual money. This is primarily achieved by playing online games and performing other tasks within the site. Most of these only reward you with a few points/cash at a time.

You have to play a bunch of games, or complete a bunch of tasks, in order to actually purchase something substantial (in a virtual kind of way). Similar to collecting tickets at a carnival or Chuck E Cheese. After 3 hours of mindnumbing games, you then can get that cheap stuffed toy from China that will fall apart before you get home.

We are training a whole new generation of consumers to accept micropayments as a way of life online. Only this time -- in a bit of e-commerce role reversal -- they are the ones getting paid. Which in the next 10 years could lead to a whole new online marketing platform.

Marketing to kids in these environments is really tough. Unless you happen to be a provider of essential nutrients and vitamins. But soon these consumers will grow up and start accessing sites where you can market to them without getting sued. Will they be willing to watch your branded online video for a few Paypal coins? Click your banners and rack up points to get real stuff? Spend 3 minutes on your brand website and win their girlfriend an exclusive virtual unicorn for her Myspace page?

Google AdSense and affiliate programs already have marketers comfortable with spending micropayments of their own for ensuring consumer action. Can't wait to see what happens when consumer microrewards and marketer micropayments finally come together.

Can't Wait Until They Add a Voice Chat Option

So hands up, who hates the New Facebook? Seems like a lot of people, which is natural when something you are really fond of gets messed with.

My concern is that they have completely buried user widgets in the new layout. Not only do I need to click on the "Boxes" tab to view them, but anyone visiting my profile page must do the same. It's going to kill the efforts of most marketers who are entering this space. Number of widget impressions will plummet dragging the number of interactions along with it. Which will also limit the viral spread. It's been the one area of Facebook that advertisers could get a foot into and has been relocated to the basement.

Which isn't the end of the bad news for marketers and social networks. A recent report shows that 46% of social networkers accessed their fave sites via mobile devices (primarily MySpace and Facebook). Mobile access is mostly limited to posting text status updates, sending messages, and viewing friend profiles.

However, the new iPhone and Google apps are bringing more functionality to mobile devices. The most recent Facebook iPhone app provides access to most of the site's content and tools -- except widgets, sponsored text links, and banner ads. Which is going to be a buzz kill for marketers.

As sites port more content to mobile, there is less need to visit the website versions. As more consumers access content away from their computers, online media pillars such as reach/frequency, time spent on site, and page views will crumble.

Social networks will need to find ways to cram advertising and marketing messages into their mobile apps. If they can find room. And if they can do it without screwing up the consumer experience, which currently is fairly nice and clean. That whole social mapping craze is looking more promising...

Drinking Games For Kids

Our Taco Bell online game was fairly successful in reaching a lot of people online. So we're trying it again for another client = MilkPEP to reach teens/tweens.

This time we're testing two types = one game purchased via online media on Neopets.com, and another launched organically via Kewlbox. Will be interesting to see how they perform against each other. We have a fixed CPM for Neopets which includes traffic-driving banners on their site. Kewlbox charges a fixed fee for game development, so its CPM is dependent on how many game plays we receive over time. Distribution hopefully goes viral via their gaming network and encouraged game embedding.

Neopets game:
http://www.neopets.com/games/play.phtml?game_id=1043

Kewlbox game:
http://www.kewlbox.com/games/gameDetail.aspx?gameID=308

When User Generated Content Attacks!

Last month United Airlines investors received the hard reminder that people believe everything they read on the Internet. A six year old article about United going bankrupt was accidentally posted to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's website, causing the stock to drop from $12.45 to $3 in 10 minutes. The Internet still has a huge influence on the dissemination of information.

For years the professional news organizations have complained that "amateur" bloggers would cause chaos with their undisciplined and objective posts. But apparently the rise of Journalism 2.0 hasn't been a complete disaster. The number of news organizations opening up their websites to the average Internet user is a growing trend.

First came the addition of user comments to news stories. Then CNN launched an entire site dedicated to video iReports -- basically a YouTube for news. These iReports are promoted and encouraged directly on CNN's homepage and in its news stories. Why have your journalists risk the latest hurricane when the locals are willing to do it for you?

CBS offers similar amateur news reports via its EyeMobile site. ABC has i-CAUGHT. Fox uReport.

For a generation of consumers raised on Web 2.0, this seems like a natural evolution. However, these respected news agencies seem to have quickly forgotten their own warnings. People will post anything they want on the Internet. People believe anything they see on the Internet. The association of your brand with that content, and the implied endorsement it provides, is where things can get really tough.

So it can't be that much of a surprise that a fake iReport posted to CNN Friday whacked Apple with a United Airlines-style roundhouse kick. The report that Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack sank Apple's stock 10% in 10 minutes before it was pulled.

And definitely shouldn't be a shocker that a photoblog service might end up with some NSFW content. (Not Safe For Work for those of you who have never visited Perez Hilton or TMZ.) Risque and downright naked images have been showing up on the CBS Eyemobile site and through its iPhone app. And Google has been serving ads right next to it.

User generated content is the shiny sparkly object right now. Most marketers are standing a few steps back and poking it with a stick, trying to decide if the benefits outweigh the risks. Some industries, such as healthcare/pharma, are standing wayyyy back watching the other marketers with binoculars.

Perhaps consumers will become desensitized to the presence of misleading and offensive content, giving brands a break when they step into it. Or perhaps marketers will retreat to more controlled versions, leaving the wild wild west to those who can get away with it.

Please Be My Closely-Proximal Friend Who Likes Dive Bars

Social networks are rapidly migrating into mobile territory to keep up with their users. Mashing up the cellphone's GPS capabilities with Google Maps has led to the latest trend = social mapping.

Basically it is nothing more than finding your "friend's" current location on a map. Or maybe your "friend's" latest comments about the Thai restaurant that is just around the corner. Newsweek, Washington Post, and Technology Review provide decent overviews of the trend. Especially love the story of the guy who used it to avoid people, rather than meet up with them. The antisocial social machine.

The iPhone has become the premiere launching pad for a lot of these social apps: Yelp, Where, Platial Nearby, Loopt, Whrrl, Moximity, seem to be leading the path. Nokia purchased UK-based social mapper Plazes, so expect that functionality to be automatically loaded into their phones. Google Android's mobile operating system should attract even more social map providers and provide access across multiple cellphone types.

Which leads to the bigger question = if anyone can tack on a GPS Google Map to their service or application, does it become so autonomous that the "find your friends" feature is irrelevant? Do I need all my friends to be signed up and using all these apps in order for them to provide value?

Many of these start ups have fallen into the risky business model based on "he with the most users signed up wins." Which is fine when there is only a limited amount of competition. But there are currently 88 social networking apps available for the iPhone, all of which could become GPS map enabled. Slim chance any of my "friends" are also using them. Not to mention that they now also have to be physically located close to me to be of interest.

Expect the social network giants like Facebook and MySpace to buy up the ones that have the best technology or interface, incorporate it into a new tab on their mobile app, and quickly decimate an entire start up vertical. Or just ignore them completely and do it on their own. Either way the same outcome prevails.

On the other hand, with the Google-supported OpenId movement, there is a chance that these apps could grab onto the holy grail of an XML friend list feed. Thus not requiring you to build up your friend list from scratch on each app, just import one from your fave social network site. Then the apps with the best features or niche community focus could prosper. Which would be great for Google, since any app using a Google map mashup becomes lucrative advertising space for them. I'm sure they would prefer to have it spread across multiple social map providers, each signed up with the AdSense network and receiving micro-kickbacks when a Google map link is clicked.

As for me, I'm working on the new iPhone app Loozr, which shows you where everyone else's friends are and how much fun they are having. Then connects you to other Loozrz in your area. The bar around the corner offers a half price "beer to cry in" if you show up in the next 15 minutes and invite 3 other Loozrz to join you.

But be careful, collect too many Loozr friends in a 1 mile radius and you get kicked off the app. Being antisocial has never been so much fun.

"Cost Per Widget" Coming Right Up

Maybe not the complete answer to measuring social media efforts, but possibly a good first step. Will be interesting to see how long it takes them to get acquired by Doubleclick or Atlas. Er, I mean, Google or Microsoft.

'BuddyBrain' Helps Clients Track Social Apps
Social media technology startup Buddy Media has launched a nerve center for its clients to track the progress of their social applications within the amorphous realm of social networks and user-generated content. Modeled after the human brain, the new BuddyBrain service is split into four "lobes" beginning with an intelligence center where clients can track real-time campaign results, including install rates, average time spent, and retention rates.

Because "Web TV" is Sooooo 1999

How about Widget TV?

TV 2.0 is coming to a living room near you. Intel has announced plans for their new set top box chips to allow "Yahoo Widgets" to run alongside TV show content (via Forbes.com).

It's really about web-enabled content via your television. Hopefully relevant web-related content. And not something that Yahoo can control long term.

Think about how the whole "rich media advertising" industry has consolidated and commoditized itself (Unicast, Pointroll, Eyeblaster, Eyewonder, Viewpoint, Shoshkeles, Klipmart, Enliven, Motif) and how the same thing will be happening in the widget vendor world. It's not proprietary technology and any widget vendor/ad network could extend into the same TV screen. I'm also sure the TV networks will want a say in what interactive advertising/media dollars are surrounding their cable advertising/media dollars.

But if it is the first step to truly interactive television in the US, and Yahoo can spearhead the media revenue stream headaches, then more power to them. As long as they don't treat it as make up impressions for my Yahoo.com widget banner buy that isn't performing well.

Branded Social Media Experiments

A nice comprehensive list of over 130 branded social media programs:

http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/09/ive-been-thinki.html

Next Up, Google Hard Drive Defragmenters

It seems Google forgot one of the universal truths that has made them so much money = consumers are complete slackers online. They have no patience for anything that requires an extra click, a few extra seconds of downloads, or sites that aren't intuitive for 5 year olds. It's why millions of people use their search engine every day. They are too lazy to try to find it themselves.

Which is why their announcement this week of a Google web browser -- codenamed Chrome -- is so odd.

The web browser wars between IE, Netscape, and AOL (before they acquired Netscape and then decided to use an IE-powered browser instead) are soooo 1998. Antitrust lawsuits aside, the main reason IE didn't lose its dominance is because it was such a pain in the ass for users to download a separate standalone browser and keep it up to date.

Sure it was part of the internet experience, back when every new browser offered new capabilities -- HTML table layouts! Frames! Newsgroup readers! Java applets! Audio! But users quickly tired of the PR battles and the endless upgrades. Then Netscape Communicator launched and sucked worse than the previous release, permanently nailing it in its underdog coffin.

Since then IE has dominated. True, Firefox (the rebirth of the good guys from Netscape's ashes) has made some headway and now claims 20% of browser share. But they don't have a revenue model and are primarily user-supported (think of a Wikipedia approach to software development), so I doubt Microsoft really cares.

I can see an initial rush of Google browser downloads by the tech savvy and curious. But the average consumer? Maybe at the insistence of their teenage kids. But once those kids get their own computer, or Dad upgrades his, then I doubt you'll see the Chrome icon anymore.

But Google has a track record of launching things to annoy its competition, or just plain jumpstart a stagnant industry. They put Mapquest on its heels by launching a superior user interface with Google Maps. Forced the telecoms to open up cellphone bandwidth for neutral device makers with their "failed" $4.6 billion bid for the 700MHZ spectrum. They will give iPhone and Microsoft a few sleepless nights with their Andromeda mobile phone operating system. They even sponsored development of a 100 MPG electric car.

Why would they get involved in things like online maps and mobile phones? Oh, yeah, potential advertising space. Electric cars? I'm sure it is more than just philanthropy.

Maybe this head fake is another attempt to provoke innovation in a space where the last technical advance was the autofill button for webpage forms. Or just another way to get that really relevant paid text link in front of you.

Be part of a historical footnote. Download Chrome now.

Your 15 MB of Fame Just Got an Extension

Earlier this year I wrote about the issues of your "private self" merging with your "public self" online. Especially the impact years from now when you think all that content is gone, deleted, or at least buried under a mountain of new internet data.

So consider every Webshots college party photo, Flickr photostream, Facebook/MySpace photo album, and random photo-sharing widget that you may be part of. And the fact that Google is paying attention and, more importantly, helping others find them:

Picasa Refresh Brings Facial Recognition

In the anticipated release of Google’s new and improvedPicasa the company will offer facial recognition technology to help you identify friends and family in your pictures without requiring you to tag them by-hand each time you see them. Launching at noon PDT today, Picasa’s facial recognition technology will ask you to identify people in your pictures that you haven’t tagged yet. Once you do and start uploading more pictures, Picasa starts suggesting tags for people based on the similarity between their face in the picture and the tags you already put in place for them.

Expect every HR hiring manager on the planet to have a subscription to this one. Not to mention an RSS alert feed for parents.

Spoiler Avoidance Just Got More Difficult

Hulu.com just announced that they will be pre-launching season premiers online for Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, Chuck, Life, and 30 Rock one week prior to their scheduled TV debuts.

Launching TV shows online first isn't new, although it is usually reserved for new shows that networks feel are getting unjust negative buzz. BBC "leaked" the new Dr. Who series debut on file sharing networks to defuse rabid fans of the old show. Showtime provided streaming episodes of Kirstie Alley's Fat Actress after negative reviews were leaked prior to launch. HBO even provided the first 15 episodes of In Treatment on iTunes as free podcast downloads after low TV viewership was revealed.

So the networks might be leveraging Hulu users -- who would highly likely be online influencers -- to drive buzz around their new shows. At least if the shows themselves are any good. Of course, all the dedicated viewers on the internet couldn't help make Quarterlife a TV hit.